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<blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 7769393" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I feel like there has been some confusion between Old School and the OSR movement....which, while certainly connected, are different things. Or, at least, they can be considered such if &quot;Old School&quot; means older games, particularly early D&amp;D and games of that era. The OSR is a more recent movement which does tend to have very strong focus on layout, readability, and usability at the table. The idea is to take the core Old School game and make it function more smoothly, and make the GM's job easier. So the layout of the 1E Player's Handbook (Old School) compared to something like Hot Springs Island or Vornheim (OSR) are very different things. Gygax was (seemingly <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ) not very concerned with readability of his rule book, but the OSR folks tend to be very much concerned with that. I don't think that saying the OSR has a strong focus on Layout means that New School cannot also focus on that. As mentioned, Blades in the Dark has a very clear and sleek layout, but I don't think anyone would consider it an OSR book by any stretch. But I think John Harper is very aware of what the OSR movement is, and I imagine he knows a good idea when he sees it.Again, the discussion can get difficult if someone says something positive about one school or the other, folks on the &quot;opposite side&quot; assume it's a knock on their school of choice. Saying that designers in the OSR movement are focused on layout doesn't mean that designers in New School are not.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="hawkeyefan, post: 7769393, member: 6785785"] I feel like there has been some confusion between Old School and the OSR movement....which, while certainly connected, are different things. Or, at least, they can be considered such if "Old School" means older games, particularly early D&D and games of that era. The OSR is a more recent movement which does tend to have very strong focus on layout, readability, and usability at the table. The idea is to take the core Old School game and make it function more smoothly, and make the GM's job easier. So the layout of the 1E Player's Handbook (Old School) compared to something like Hot Springs Island or Vornheim (OSR) are very different things. Gygax was (seemingly :) ) not very concerned with readability of his rule book, but the OSR folks tend to be very much concerned with that. I don't think that saying the OSR has a strong focus on Layout means that New School cannot also focus on that. As mentioned, Blades in the Dark has a very clear and sleek layout, but I don't think anyone would consider it an OSR book by any stretch. But I think John Harper is very aware of what the OSR movement is, and I imagine he knows a good idea when he sees it. Again, the discussion can get difficult if someone says something positive about one school or the other, folks on the "opposite side" assume it's a knock on their school of choice. Saying that designers in the OSR movement are focused on layout doesn't mean that designers in New School are not. [/QUOTE]

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